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The Saint of Bright Doors Q3 – The story format
What did you think of the way the story was laid out? Was the structure one that you enjoyed or did it not work for you? Is the label of ‘magical realism’ one that you would describe as accurate or did it come off in a different way? Are there other books that use this type of structure that you have read and what have you thought about them?
Comments
I particularly liked the growing revelations about Mother-of-Glory and thought that that particular unfolding was one of the strongest features. By way of contrast, I never really felt that I learned much about the Perfect-and-Kind, and he remained for me almost a complete blank.
The long section a little over half-way through (I think) when the protagonist is working his way through the prison camp (city? state?) seemed over-long to me.
My other problem was when towards the end we suddenly re-meet some individuals from much earlier on, there had been too long a gap for me, so I kept thinking "who was that? why were they significant?" rather than grasping what was going on.
I'm never quite sure what a definition of magical realism is, so I'm happy to be corrected, but I wouldn't have classed this as such. As a club we've read a number of books in the last year or so from a Far Eastern background and set of assumptions, but I think this is the first one from the Indian subcontinent.
I don't think the story format was anything unusual. It was a fairly chronological retelling of a sequence of events in Fetter's life. The biggest surprise was the change from third-person to first-person narration at the end. I liked that it overturned the notion of the observer, having it as a character in the story rather than a conceit of the form.
I'm not overly sure that Fetter changed that much as a person. He somewhat came out of his mother's shadow (pun intended) to be his own person at the end, but that person didn't have any clear direction in his life. The overall motif seemed to be one of people existing in the face of huge, impersonal forces that define the space they can live in. Nothing seemed really to be within the control of Fetter, or anyone else really.
I don't think this is magic realism, because the cosmology taken as reality is not what this society considers realism. Also, I am under the impression that magic realism deals with an intersection of the shared actuality of the reader with an uncommon and individual causal explanation that does not undermine that actuality but enhances it. I'm happy to be corrected about this - just an impression, not based on study.
Also, I don't think the cosmology of this book is part of any reader's prior shared experience, although it does play with several aspects that can be recognised but not believed, like a reflection in a fun-house mirror.
It's very possible I have an incorrect idea of what magical realism is so I may have to do more research on the topic. I thought it slid into that category.
I found the structure a bit difficult to manage at times, but moreso in how it sort of meandered along for stretches. The "prison" section was already mentioned but it felt mostly pointless to me and I wondered why it was included at all.
I think I am coming to the conclusion that I just entirely missed the point! I felt this way about Dhalgren when I finished it. Sort of like there was a whole great book tucked away in there that I saw glimpses of in the prose, but I was mostly confused and kept wondering what I was missing because it also was one of those books that a lot of people loved.